The Savage

by Frank Bill

  Killing the truck lights, Van Dorn’s father let the moon navigate him into a half-circle driveway. Still rolling Van Dorn’s words around in his mind, Horace concluded that Dorn was correct in what he said, though there was little reason for him to treat his father with disrespect. The distance they’d traveled wasn’t easy for either of them. Horace missed planing and staining wood. Hammering nails and driving screws into treated boards to frame a deck or an addition. To create something of substance. Worth. And he’d not lain with a female in over twelve months or better. But the whiskey helped to numb those emotions of want.

  The brick home sat lone, devoid of vehicle or light, with neighboring other dwellings standing over a football field away. Shifting into reverse, Horace backed down the lumped soil. Tucked the truck up next to the house and killed the engine. Van Dorn grabbed his flashlight, unlatched the passenger-side door. Horace reached for Van Dorn’s arm. Strained for words to better all that had been passed between them but found none as Van Dorn jerked free.

  Outside of the truck, Horace stood opposite Van Dorn, fastening his tool belt. Dorn pouted, stared out into the night from which they’d come, and Horace told him. “Quit wasting the dark, get your cutter and bar, go around back, they’s supporting walls, looks to be a walk-out, try the doors, start on the basement pipes.”

  From the Ford’s bed, Dorn pulled a battery-powered saw and hexagonal crowbar and said, “Yes, master.” Then disappeared around the corner of the house before Horace could acknowledge the salty-tongued reply.

  Tasting the bitterness of truth, Horace knew there was no reward for the struggling. Seemed the harder one tried, the harder life came, and all one could do was keep dredging forward, hoping for a sign that acknowledged the accuracy for one’s direction.

  He tried the side door before committing to prying. The knob turned and the door opened. Scents of mildewed lumber and chalky walls engulfed Horace’s inhale. Shining a light on the kitchen floor, he saw that tile and grout lay in pieces, had been plied or broken, coffee stains dotted the ceiling with jellyfish outlines, the countertops were scuffed to the particleboard beneath them. Cabinet doors had been sprung and removed from hinges.

  Kneeling down, the father looked beneath the sink. A foul odor decorated the square space; he wanted to check the piping, see how it was connected, whether it was hard or flex. It was neither. It’d been gutted.

  In its place lay the chalky bones of a small animal. Pieces of hide. Entrails. Specks of pissants and shells of dead flies. “What in the hell?” Van Dorn’s father muttered. Standing up, he walked to a set of doors and opened them, expecting to find the water heater, but it was gone.

  Following the warped walls from the kitchen to the dining area, Horace glanced around the open areas of shadow. Decay lingered in the air and he listened for Dorn, could hear no jarring of metal teeth against mineral pipe. Took in the drywall that held smears of handprints, had been pebbled to the floor from wire being ripped out but not finished. Just frayed ends of copper hanging as if some scrappers had been halted of their actions.

  From the far left corner next to a curtainless window, a yoke hung balanced in its center from above. It held medium-sized hooks on each end where two hinds had been attached, now shriveled. The carcass they’d been connected to was no more, only sticky splotches of matted pelt and blood lay on the floor. Looked to have been from a deer, Horace thought. Steps printed from the mess, tracked toward a hallway where shapes flicked and strobed. Worry stirred within Horace. His grip damp around the crowbar, wanting to find Van Dorn, be rid of this place. Stepping down the hall into a windowless room that reeked of urine. A candle sat creating a static haze. Shining over the blots of shag; blankets lay twisted and piled. A doorless opening descended. Basement, Horace thought. In the corner, grimed toenails poked from boots that were attached to frayed denim. The father guided the light up the legs. Made out two silhouettes. A voice came in a sparking screech. “Dim that there light, trespasser.”

  The shape of a man held a length of steel pressed to Van Dorn’s throat. His face looked cooked and split. One eye stared. The other was bare skin the shade of a cherry-flavored slushie.

  Van Dorn gripped the reciprocating saw at his thigh.

  “Don’t be quaking that edge to my boy’s throat, we’ve no yearn for trouble.”

  Thoughts of dying entered Van Dorn’s mind. Of all that he’d seen. All that he’d not done. They’d crossed some unruly types on their journey but nothing that made him question his longevity.

  “This here is our squat.”

  “Release your clutch from the boy, we’ll be a memory.”

  The words our squat had not registered in Horace’s understanding when he saw the blade making contact with Dorn’s neck, but the aroma of dated cottage cheese suffused with humidity suddenly weighed heavy on him. Van Dorn’s whites metered wide.

  Two feet of lumber angled into Horace’s nape. The flashlight danced on the floor. Horace palmed at the throb in his neck. “Shit!” Took another hit from the wood. A voice clanked over Horace with a warning: “All your kind do is cripple the foundation of its worth. Teach you not to carve and steal for density.”

  Tense, Van Dorn’s gut knotted with the blows that descended upon his father. Knowing he should’ve turned back the same way he’d entered. Seeing where the plumbing had been stripped; animal carcasses and human feces littered the basement walls and floor. The blade came from nowhere, threatened him with “Yell and it’ll be your last. Just watch and listen.” The heathen man and Dorn waited.

  Van Dorn spasmed, felt the sharpness against his throat. The laugh of words sprayed over his shoulder. “Elsner’s getting his groove on your pops.”

  Watching Horace’s outline on the floor, Van Dorn felt the heathen’s chest in his back. A hand rubbed at the arch of muscle that connected to his hamstring. The other man laid a boot into Horace’s ribs. The heathen relaxed the knife, began sniffing Dorn’s lobe. Horace grunted. Dorn wanted to vomit. Thoughts of what to do. How to do it came all at once. Van Dorn raised his left hand up his body. Fingered the sharp line below his chin. Squeezed the trigger of the saw in his right, spun, and slanted a crosscut into the meat of the man’s leg. The man bellowed, “Aw, shit! Shit!” Hot specks peppered Van Dorn’s hand; he watched the man reach and pat at the dark that spread from his thigh like a busted transmission.

  The one called Elsner looked to the screams. Then came the crack. The separation of foot. Then another crack and the discomfort that blistered up Elsner’s shin and knee. Caused the release of the wood. Elsner squealed, bent forward at the split and give of his calcified metatarsal’s tissue. Horace worked his way from the floor with a hammer. Stood heaving and leveled the straight claw into Elsner’s scalp.

  Fingers raked at Van Dorn’s shoulder with adrenaline. “Help your ole man.” Dorn leaned, supported Horace’s mass as he panted, “Lead us from this goddamned layer of filth.”

  Van Dorn guided them down the hall, into the dining room, where several outlines emerged. Raising the tool, Dorn mashed the trigger of the saw, cut at the air, parted through something meaty; a man groaned, “Bastard.” Bodies backed away barking, “No, stop, stop.” Van Dorn rushed, dragging Horace into the kitchen and out the door.

  At the truck, Horace swung his arm from Van Dorn, reached for the driver’s-side door, and said, “I can navigate.”

  Firing the engine, Horace shifted into drive and stomped the gas. Tires flung dirt till they bit hard surface. He drove out the same way he’d entered, questioned what had just taken place, trying to make sense of what they’d walked into, some unknown juncture of midwestern hell.

  After surviving a near-death experience and viewing the possibility of losing his son, Horace pondered what he’d spoken to Dorn. The clenched fists he’d belted him with. Guilt of his abuse sunk in. Of their lives of salvage. Maybe he’d traveled so long that he’d lost sight of change. He felt the rhythm pounding behind his breast. Knowing what caused this beat was bloo
d. It was the same that pulsed within Van Dorn, and as they disappeared into the raven of morning, Horace told him, “Maybe it’s time we looked to settle back home, maybe rebuild what once was, create a new existence.”

  With the haze of dawn bringing the shapes of trees and field grass into focus, Horace and Van Dorn followed the back roads that morning down to the Stage Stop Campgrounds. Pitched their avocado-colored tent and camped. Slept like soldiers after a recon suicide mission. Woke well after lunch with the sun’s glow beating down on the tent. Overwhelming them with stifling heat. Making it uncomfortable to breathe. Their bodies lacquered by damp, road grit, and a week or better without bathing.

  Waking, they packed up. Horace needed fuel and Van Dorn was bit by the want for something more than the weight of carp or bluegill being snagged and reeled from the Blue River.

  With the windows down, they headed west on 62, turned north on 66. Passing a Pilot gas station. Van Dorn questioned why Horace didn’t stop, and Horace told him, “Wanna see the old land I’ve distanced us from after all this time.”

  Highway 66 curved and dropped, though it was less steep than Van Dorn recalled. There was a time when riding down it felt as though one were free-falling from a cliff that had been dug out. Reconstructed and widened. Trees looked as though they were dying. Their leaves turning early. The land around them weathered, not green but singed like a burnt russet.

  Horace followed 66 all the way to Marengo, where it turned into Main Street. Crossing over old 64, Horace cruised by wood-sided homes. Brown shutters peeling, front doors missing and jambs rotted, and roofs collapsing. Old Dodge with doors ajar, paint discolored by sun. Trees littered what yards there were, dead of growth. Where torn garbage bags knotted and hung from limbs. White signs with red letters had been nailed on the front of each home, reading: THIS BUILDING OR STRUCTURE HAS BEEN DEEMED TO BE IN UNSAFE CONDITION AND SHALL NOT BE USED OR ENTERED BY ANYONE WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE BUILDING INSPECTOR OF MARENGO.

  Horace wheeled past the red brick of the Old General Store that was no longer in business. Metal barrels sat on the side. One mashed a decaying black, the other rusted and dented. A busted-up pay phone mounted to the building’s outer wall. They turned down Water Street. Steered a U-turn in front of a powder-blue metal-sided pole barn. On the white bay doors someone had spray-painted SUPer SHInE DeTAIL ShOp. Heading back the way they’d come, Horace fired up a cigarette. Let it lie loose on his lip. Turned down 64 and drove west toward English. Van Dorn took in more of what they’d been away from for so long: the small roadside park with a rock-climbing wall that was more of a pull-off and rest area than a park. The Jay C food store and the Curby ice cream shop, an area that still had not been built up or overrun by Walmart and fast-food chains. It was still simple and small. Mom-and-pop businesses. Not polluted with too many choices. The way towns should be, or had once been.

  Horace turned down 237. To the right stood a greening turquoise statue of William Hayden English, the man the town had taken its name from, an Indiana politician. Pulling to a stop next to a pair of dated gas pumps, with long metal levers on the side, Horace looked to the calico brick building with a red tin roof—it was the English minimart—and Horace said, “From 1859 to 1990—”

  Van Dorn finished for his father. “—the community encountered six floods, town council bought one hundred and sixty acres, and moved everything to higher ground. Second-largest relocation for a town in U.S. history.”

  Evening was upon Van Dorn and Horace. Smirking at the boy, he said, “At least you’ve still a mind for the importance of the historical. Of learning where people come from and what they’ve suffered to get where they’re at in life.”

  “It’s what you learned me.”

  “That it is. Glad it’s stuck.”

  The minimart’s door lay steel-framed in the center with a bay window on either side. To the right sat a scratched white newspaper box. On the left, a huge ashtray sat spilling over with butts. Horace stubbed out his remaining smoke and they entered the mart.

  Brass bell overhead jingled. To the left stood a female behind the counter. Ale-burnt skin. Locks thick, dark, wavy, reared, and banded atop of her head. She wore a gray T-shirt. Nodded without expression.

  “Evening.”

  Horace adjusted his cap, brushed his hands over the stained and messed Hanes he’d been wearing for days, and said, “Evening, ma’am. Me and the boy be grabbing some provisions.” He pointed to smokes lined up above her head. “I’ll be needing a carton of Camels and twenty-five dollars of fuel.”

  “Sure. I lay the smokes here for when you’s ready to check out,” the female said as if she were lost in a catatonic haze.

  In front of the counter stood a blanched-faced beast of a man with graying shards of beard, grease-stained trousers, a head sheared of any hair. Folds of scar lined his neck with a thick black graving of ink that Van Dorn couldn’t make out. He twisted his face to Horace and Van Dorn, spoke in a rusty tone. “Is a wave of heat out there, ain’t it?”

  Discomfort melded through Van Dorn’s body like butter to hot toast. Horace nodded to the man. Fucked him with his eyes. Said, “About the same as it’s been.”

  Keeping his body between the man and Van Dorn, Horace and Van Dorn surveyed the aisles of shelving to their right. Upon tiers lay bags of chips, candy bars, jarred sauces, canned goods, and relishes. Sensing his father’s unease—something was out of order—Van Dorn could feel Horace’s protecting, keeping himself closer to Dorn than usual. Not letting him walk the small aisles alone. Horace’s eyes darted to the man without shifting his view while pulling cans of chicken, SPAM, and sardines, beans, a bag of rice, and a loaf of bread from the shelves. A radio sat on the shelf behind the lady, playing Jamey Johnson’s “High Cost of Living.” They approached the coolers to the back; drinks, lunch meats, and eggs were enclosed, kept cold. Dorn pulled out bottles of water, a package of ham and bacon from within. Walked back toward the counter with Horace.

  What Van Dorn and his father hadn’t seen when they entered and passed by the beastly man was the matted black Wilson Combat .45 pistol in his right hand. The man had now turned his back to the entrance. Trained the barrel on Horace. With his left hand he pushed a nylon bag upon the lard-colored counter next to the carton of Camels.

  “Pay no worry to this gun. After the half-breed cunt fills the sack and you lay your wallet on the counter, I’ll be a distant memory.”

  The man’s yellow eyes twitched wide with a fluorescent glow.

  Van Dorn’s father pursed his lips and said, “The lady won’t be filling the sack with cash and I sure as shit won’t be offering up my hard-earned efforts to nourish me and my son upon the counter.”

  Holding the pistol at Horace’s chest, eyes bulged with anger, the man thumbed the hammer back, stared through Horace, told the lady without looking at her, “Empty that fucking machine of its worth, Widow.” And to Horace he demanded, “You drop the groceries. Lay your wallet to the counter or the floor gets a fresh shine of you and your boy.”

  Horace looked to the lady behind the counter slowly and said, “Don’t give him a damn thing.”

  With meanness the man said, “She shall.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Testing me? That it, stranger?” He glanced over to Horace’s left, leveled his sight at Van Dorn, who was near equal to the size of his father. Ran a tongue over his bottom lip. Demanded, “Come here, boy.”

  “Don’t move, Dorn,” Horace said, then back to the man: “Place that shooter back down the hem of your denim. Walk out the same way you entered before I open you like a can of beans.”

  The man found Horace’s words amusing. Chuckled. Van Dorn watched the man’s index finger rub the trigger. Size him up. He had maybe an inch or two on Horace but each held swells of muscle built from labor and hard living. The man shook his head. Repeated his request to the lady he called the Widow. “Tired of waiting to see who has the biggest dick. Empty that fucking machine or I give
the boy a new breathing hole.”

  The man’s words carved malice throughout Horace. Van Dorn could see the red that kindled the side of Horace’s face. Horace told the female behind the counter once more, “Don’t give him no currency.”

  The man’s cheeks scorched like burners on a stove turned to high. “Clip your fuckin’—”

  Behind the counter the Widow moved. Reached for something low. The man with the gun caught a glimpse of her movement. Glanced toward the female.

  Fury edged and pushed through Horace’s insides. He came forward with the cans of food, released them, grabbed at the pistol with both hands. Pushed the gun hand up. Drove a left knee into the man’s rib cage. Kept himself between the beast and Van Dorn. Shielding him. Horace and the man stumbled back and forth. Struggled for control.

  Horace angled the knuckles of his right fist into the side of the man’s complexion over and over. Drawing an ooze from the temple till the man slipped Horace’s grip. Brought the side of the pistol against Horace’s jaw. Knocked him against the counter. Standing with blood spewing down onto his shirt. Training the .45 on Horace, the man told him, “Might look Aryan by the shade of your pigment, but your actions speak otherwise.”

  Horace came growling from the counter, followed by the eruption of gunfire.

  NOW

  Violence engulfed Dorn’s every reflection. Distancing himself from the memories of the food mart. The Sheldon girl’s face netted around his brain with darkly pigmented men covered in tattoos that Dorn’d slain and those that came upon the aftermath. Especially that outline of a figure with the crown of thorns.

  Up the basement steps he came, exhausted from the memories. Pouch of venison slung over his shoulder. Jar of potatoes in hand. Outdoor Life magazine in his back pocket. Through the dining room and out the kitchen door. A crippling hunger pulsed in his organs. Unlike his thoughts, the night was clear overhead. Gas for the stove in the house had run out within the first month. Paper and leaves had been piled. Twigs were tepeed over them. Lit and then kindling stacked till the singe of coal came from the small log that smoked over the open flame of orange and yellow.